“A major prisoners swap was just completed between Russia and Ukraine. It will go into effect shortly,” Trump said. “Congratulations to both sides on this negotiation. This could lead to something big?”
A source familiar with the matter, however, told The Kyiv Independent the swap was still ongoing.
“We are working to ensure that this result is achieved,” he wrote.
The two sides met last week in Istanbul and Zelensky continued that Ukraine’s Minister of Defense Rustem Umerov is involved with the “organization of the process and the implementation of the agreement,” but several other prominent members of the Ukrainian government have also taken part in the process.
Zelensky also added that his team is “clarifying the details for each individual included on the lists submitted by the Russian side.
“Returning all of our people from Russian captivity is one of Ukraine’s key objectives,” he said.
He also posted Monday that “the most significant outcome of the meetings [in Turkey] was the agreement to conduct a prisoner exchange in a 1,000-for-1,000 format.”
Additionally, Ukraine’s Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War had announced on Telegram last week that Russia had returned the bodies of 909 Ukrainian soldiers.
For weeks now, Americans — left, right and terminally online — have been obsessed with Joe Biden’s fitness as president. The whispers about cognitive decline, once the province of Fox News pundits and dinner table cranks, have gone mainstream. And now, with the release of a couple of high-profile books and a report confirming that Biden has been diagnosed with prostate cancer, the narrative has curdled into something that feels downright scandalous — maybe even conspiratorial. A full-blown cover-up.
Is that an understandable, if predictable, reaction? Sure. But let’s not pretend this was some shocking plot twist. Biden has been aging in public like a banana on a dashboard for a decade — a fact that became undeniable after his infamous June 2024 debate with Donald Trump.
So who’s to blame? Let’s start with Biden’s inner circle. The underlying charge is that Biden was asleep at the wheel, with someone else driving the presidential bus. We’ve seen this narrative before: The figurehead nods, the handlers handle and the country rolls on, more or less. With various degrees of verisimilitude, similar charges have been leveled at the administrations of Woodrow Wilson (hi, Edith) and Ronald Reagan (hi, Nancy).
My take on Biden is pretty much the same as it was with Reagan. Whoever was running the country wasn’t half bad. Sure, maybe, toward the end, Uncle Joe wasn’t gripping the wheel as tightly as he used to. But at least the bus stayed between the lines.
Whether it was Jill Biden, “The Politburo” (a cabal of top aides accused of running the show) or a sentient Microsoft Excel spreadsheet — the government mostly worked. Ukraine got funded, the stock market didn’t implode, and your odds of being sent to prison in El Salvador were virtually nil.
Yes, mistakes were made during Biden’s presidency. Plenty. The Afghanistan withdrawal was a disaster. Illegal border crossings soared. Biden’s COVID relief probably juiced inflation. But these weren’t deranged or asleep-at-the-wheel decisions: They were predictable policy fumbles, consistent with Biden’s worldview (sort of like an NFL coach opting to run a prevent defense in the third quarter — wrongheaded, but understandable).
The more obvious problem was Biden’s inability to communicate. Biden couldn’t explain where he wanted to drive the bus, let alone inspire confidence in his ability to get us there. And that’s not just bad political optics. It’s a real governance issue. If FDR had mumbled through the fireside chats, we might all be speaking German.
Biden insiders squinted and pretended everything was fine. Not because they’re villains, but because even proximity to power is addictive.
Other Biden enablers had more noble reasons to convince themselves the ends justified the means. If Trump is an existential threat to democracy, then keeping Grandpa Joe upright — literally, metaphorically, pharmaceutically — was a moral imperative.
Again, understandable: Trump’s lies about the 2020 election led to an armed mob chanting about hanging the vice president. The exaggerations about Biden’s fitness mostly led to awkward silences and gentle nudges offstage.
But this isn’t just about Biden’s inner circle deluding themselves. The media was complicit, too. Their main contribution wasn’t lying or even spinning (although there are examples of both). The dirty secret of modern media is this: Yes, the news industry leans liberal. But more than that, it leans toward drama, car chases and celebrity trials.
Biden, bless his heart, is boring. And thanks to Trump’s penchant for being the bride at every wedding and the corpse at every funeral, guess who got the attention?
Think I’m making excuses or exaggerating? A mere two days after the report came out in which special counsel Robert Hur described Biden as a “well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory,” Trump went out of his way to change the subject by: 1) attacking Nikki Haley’s husband (who was on a military deployment) and 2) telling NATO allies he wouldn’t honor our treaty and defend them from Russia if they don’t pay their bills.
An old maxim says you should never interfere with your opponent when he’s committing suicide. Well, Biden was in the process of drowning, and Trump threw him a life preserver.
The coverage existed. But media bias isn’t just about what gets reported. It’s about what gets repeated. Loudly. Over and over. So, yes, Biden’s decline was reported and discussed. It just wasn’t amplified.
Now, we can pretend this is some devious plot. Or we can admit that real life isn’t “House of Cards” or even “Veep.” It was something much more banal: collective inertia.
In the end, the scandal isn’t that the media and Democratic partisans conspired to keep us in the dark about Joe Biden’s fitness for office. The scandal is that the truth was hidden in plain sight (the American public knew Biden was unfit), yet a lot of elites chose not to see it.
Not because they’re evil, but because of loyalty, proximity to power, exhaustion and yes, desperation. Because they’re human.
And maybe, just maybe, because they were terrified of what (or who) would come next, when the old man finally shuffled offstage.
Matt K. Lewis is the author of “Filthy Rich Politicians” and “Too Dumb to Fail.”
May 23 (UPI) — The GOP-led House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform has called on President Joe Biden‘s physician and former White House aides to sit for interviews as it investigates an alleged cover-up of the former president’s health.
“The cover-up of President Biden’s obvious mental decline is a historic scandal,” Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., said in a statement Thursday. “The American people deserve to know why this decline began, how far it progressed and who was making critical decisions on his behalf.”
Concerns about Biden’s age and mental capacity plagued his re-election campaign and the perception of his fitness for office, following a poor showing at a debate against Donald Trump in June, led to his eventual withdrawal from the race.
In the past week, there has been renewed interest in Biden’s health after he announced he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer, and the publication of books that allege his mental capacity while in office had diminished since his election.
Allegations and conspiracy theories have been made by President Donald Trump and Republicans that there was a Democratic coverup of Biden’s decline while in office and that someone else other than the 46th president was making decisions during his term in office.
Comer, who led a failed multiyear impeachment investigation into Biden and his family during the Biden administration, sent letters on Thursday to Dr. Kevin O’Connor, Biden’s physician and longtime family friend, and four of his close aides, demanding they sit for transcribed interviews.
The four aides to receive letters from Comer are: Neera Tanden, former director of the Domestic Policy Council, Anthony Bernal; former assistant to the president and senior adviser to former first lady Jill Biden; Annie Tomasini, former assistant to the president and deputy chief of staff; and Ashley Williams, former special assistant to the president and deputy director of Oval Office operations.
In the letter to O’Connor, Comer wrote that the committee is “investigating the accuracy, transparency and credibility of your medical assessments” of Biden during his presidency, citing his February 2024 report that described then-president as “a healthy, active, robust 81-year-old male, who remains fit to successfully execute the duties of the president.”
“Further, the Committee remains interested in whether your financial relationship with the Biden family affected your assessment of former President Biden’s physical and mental fitness to fulfill his duties as president. Given your connections with the Biden family, the Committee seeks to understand if you contributed to an effort to hide former President Biden’s fitness to serve from the American people.”
Biden announced his prostate cancer diagnosis on Sunday.
Trump — who has long attacked Biden over his border policies, often describing them as “Biden’s open borders” — did an about-face following his former political opponent’s cancer announcement and shifted blame to those in Biden’s inner circle whom he now accuses of being behind the alleged cover-up.
“Joe Biden was not for Open Borders, he never talked about Open Borders … it wasn’t his idea to Open the Border, and almost destroy our Country … It was the people that knew he was cognitively impaired and that took over the Autopen,” Trump said on his Truth Social media platform.
“This is TREASON at the Highest Level!”
Comer said he wants responses to his letters by May 29 and is seeking to schedule interviews between June 2 and 25.
Washington and Tehran have taken a tough public stance before talks, with enrichment a key point of contention.
Iran and the United States are set to hold a fifth round of talks on Tehran’s nuclear programme amid uncompromising rhetoric on both sides.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and US President Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff are due to meet in Rome on Friday.
The ongoing talks, mediated by Oman, seek a new deal in which Iran would be prevented from producing nuclear weapons while having international sanctions eased. However, little progress has been made so far, and both Washington and Tehran have taken a tough stance in public in recent days, particularly regarding Iran’s enrichment of uranium.
Witkoff has said Iran cannot be allowed to carry out any enrichment.
Tehran, which has raised its enrichment to about 60 percent, well above civilian needs but below the 90 percent needed for weaponisation, has rejected that “red line”.
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called the demand “excessive and outrageous,” warning that the ongoing talks are unlikely to yield results.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Tuesday that Washington is working to reach an agreement that would allow Iran to have a civil nuclear energy program but not enrich uranium, while admitting that achieving such a deal “will not be easy”.
On Thursday, the State Department announced new sanctions on Iran’s construction sector.
“Figuring out the path to a deal is not rocket science,” Araghchi said on social media on Friday morning. “Zero nuclear weapons = we DO have a deal. Zero enrichment = we do NOT have a deal. Time to decide…”
A spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Tehran took aim at the new sanctions, calling the move “vicious, illegal, and inhumane”.
High stakes
The stakes are high for both sides. Trump wants to curtail Tehran’s potential to produce a nuclear weapon that could trigger a regional nuclear arms race.
Iran insists its nuclear ambitions are strictly civilian, but seeks to ease international sanctions that hamper its economy.
During his first term, in 2018, Trump nixed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), a 2015 agreement that saw Iran scale back its nuclear programme in exchange for eased sanctions.
After his return to the White House for a second term in January, Trump renewed his “maximum pressure” programme against Iran, piling further economic pressure, for example, by choking the country’s oil exports, particularly to China.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has rejected US demands to halt enrichment and suggested that the ongoing talks are unlikely to produce results (File: Reuters)
Iran responded defiantly, promising to defend itself against any attack and escalating enrichment far beyond the 2015 pact’s limits.
Tensions began to ease in April as the two countries launched the talks mediated by Oman, but Tehran’s enrichment programme has become a major point of contention.
Should that see the talks fail, the cost could be high. Trump has repeatedly threatened military action if no deal is reached.
Israel, which opposes the US talks with its regional foe, has warned that it would never allow Iran to obtain nuclear weapons. Following reports that Israel may be planning to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities, Araghchi warned on Thursday that Washington will bear legal responsibility if Iran is attacked.
May 23 (UPI) — The Pentagon is sending an additional 1,115 soldiers to the U.S.-Mexico border, U.S. Northern Command announced Thursday.
The troops are being deployed to Joint Task Force-Southern Border to provide sustainment, engineering, medical and operational capabilities, USNORTHCOM said in a statement.
Securing the border has been a top priority of President Donald Trump. On Jan. 20, his first in office, Trump declared a controversial emergency at the southern border, claiming “America’s sovereignty is under attack.”
Two days later, the Defense Department announced the first deployment of some 1,500 troops to the border.
With the announcement Thursday, the deployment grows to some 10,000 troops.
Earlier this month, the Department of Homeland Security asked the Pentagon for more than 20,000 National Guard members to support Trump’s crackdown on immigration.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa met Donald Trump in a bid to reset US ties. But critics say he missed a key chance to counter Trump’s false ‘white genocide’ claims. Al Jazeera’s @FahmidaMiller reports on the mixed reaction from Johannesburg.
May 22 (UPI) — The Supreme Court ruled Thursday in favor of President Donald Trump‘s firing of two Democratic board members of independent oversight agencies as litigation over their removal continues.
The conservative-leaning high court ruled 6-3 in support of the government’s request for an emergency order staying several lower-court rulings that had ordered the reinstatement of Gwynne Wilcox to the National Labor Relations Board and Cathy Harris to the Merit Systems Protection Board.
All three liberal justices dissented.
Wilcox was removed from the labor board by President Donald Trump on Jan. 27, with no cause given. Harris was fired by the president on Feb. 10, also without reason.
Both sued the government in response. District courts ruled that they were unlawfully dismissed by the president, arguing Trump exceeded his power in doing so. The courts pointed to a 1935 Supreme Court decision, Humphrey’s Executor, that permits Congress to limit the president’s ability to fire officials from independent agencies.
Both Wilcox and Harris were appointed by President Joe Biden and confirmed by the Senate. Wilcox has three years remaining in her term, and Harris has four. The boards were also created by Congress as bipartisan and independent.
They were removed as Trump fired thousands of government workers, including heads of independent agencies, in a federal government overhaul to consolidate power under the executive branch.
In the majority ruling on Thursday, the Supreme Court cited the Constitution, which vests executive powers in the president, including the authority to remove officers without cause who “exercise considerable executive power.”
The justices did not rule on the merits of the case, explaining that their stay is does not determine whether either the NLRB or MSPB exercise executive power, and that question is better left to ongoing litigation in the case.
The ruling added that the government faces “greater risk of harm” by allowing the fired board members to resume their positions and exercise executive power than a wrongfully removed officer faces from being denied reinstatement.
“A stay is appropriate to avoid the disruptive effect of the repeated removal and reinstatement of officers during the pendency of this litigation,” the majority wrote.
The Supreme Court also cooled concerns raised by Wilcox and Harris in the case about implications their removals might have on removal protections for other independent agencies, specifically the Federal Reserve Board of Governors or the Federal Open Market Committee.
“The Federal Reserve is a uniquely structured, quasi-private entity that follows in the distinct historical tradition of the First and Second Banks of the United States,” the majority said.
In dissent, Justice Elena Kagan, writing on behalf of the other two liberal justices, accused the president of effectively disregarding Humphrey’s, saying he either wants it overruled or confined and is acting on that belief by taking the law into his own hands.
“Not since the 1950s (or even before) has a President, without a legitimate reason, tried to remove an officer from a classic independent agency — a multi-member, bipartisan commission exercising regulatory power whose government statute contains a for-cause provision,” she wrote.
“Yet now the President has discharged, concededly without cause such officers, including a member of the NLRB (Gwynne Wilcox) and a member of the MSPB (Cathy Harris). Today, this court effectively blesses those deeds. I would not.”
She continued by stating that the decision in this case was an easy one to make, and was made correctly by the lower courts.
Trump, she said, has no legal right to relief, and Congress, by statute, has protected members of the NLRB and MSPB from removal by the president except for good cause.
To fire Wilcox and Harris without good cause is to upend Humphrey’s, she argued.
“For that reason, the majority’s order granting the President’s request for a stay is nothing short of extraordinary,” she said.
“And so the order allows the President to overrule Humphrey’s by fiat.”
Moody’s ratings agency has stripped the US of its last perfect credit rating.
United States debt has long been considered the safest of all safe havens. But, Washington has just lost its pristine reputation as a borrower. Moody’s has downgraded the nation from its top-notch AAA rating, becoming the last of the big three agencies to do so. The ratings agency has cited the United States’s growing debt – now at $36 trillion, almost 120 percent of gross domestic product – and rising debt service costs. Against this backdrop, President Donald Trump is pushing what he calls the “one big, beautiful bill”. Critics warn his tax cut package could add trillions more to the already ballooning deficit.
The administration of President Donald Trump has taken a hard line against top US universities over their responses to pro-Palestine protests, as well as their diversity initiatives and curricula.
In a statement, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said the administration was “holding Harvard accountable for fostering violence, antisemitism, and coordinating with the Chinese Communist Party on its campus”.
Harvard has called the latest move “unlawful” and a “retaliatory action”.
Here’s how we got here:
December 2023: The standoff stretches back to the months following the October 7, 2023 attack on southern Israel, and the resulting Israeli offensive on Gaza, in which at least 53,655 Palestinians have since been killed.
Then-Harvard President Claudine Gay’s testimony before Congress on the administration’s response to pro-Palestine protests sparks outrage, as elected officials, particularly Republicans, call for greater crackdowns.
January 2025: Trump takes office in January 2025, following a campaign where he vowed to crack down on pro-Palestine protests, diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programmes, and “woke ideology” on college campuses.
Trump also signs a series of executive orders calling for government agencies to take actions against DEI programmes at private institutions, including universities, and to increase government actions to combat anti-Semitism, particularly on campuses.
February 2025: The US Department of Justice (DOJ) launches a task force to “root out anti-Semitic harassment in schools and on college campuses”.
The task force later announces it will visit 10 schools, saying it was “aware of allegations that the schools may have failed to protect Jewish students and faculty members from unlawful discrimination, in potential violation of federal law”.
The schools include Harvard, as well as Columbia University, George Washington University, Johns Hopkins University, New York University, Northwestern University, the University of California, Los Angeles, the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Minnesota, and the University of Southern California.
March 7, 2025: The Trump administration takes its first action against a US university, slashing $400m in federal funding to Columbia University and accusing the school of “continued inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students”.
A subsequent letter from the Department of Education warns Harvard and dozens of other universities of “potential enforcement actions”.
March 21, 2025: Columbia yields to Trump’s demands, which include banning face masks, empowering campus police with arresting authority, and installing a new administrator to oversee the department of Middle East, South Asian and African Studies and the Center for Palestine Studies.
March 31, 2025: The US Departments of Education (ED), Health and Human Services (HHS), and the US General Services Administration (GSA) announce an official review of $255.6m in Harvard contracts and $8.7bn in multi-year grants.
The review is part of the “ongoing efforts of the Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism”, the statement said.
April 11, 2025: Harvard is sent a letter saying the university has “failed to live up to both the intellectual and civil rights conditions that justify federal investment” and listing several Trump administration demands.
The demands include a governance overhaul that lessens the power of students and some staff, reforming hiring and admissions practices, refusing to admit students deemed “hostile to the American values and institutions”, doing away with diversity programmes, and auditing several academic programmes and centres, including several related to the Middle East.
April 14, 2025: Harvard President Garber issues a forceful rejection of the demands, writing: “The University will not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights”.
The US administration announces an immediate freeze on funding, including $2.2bn in multi-year grants and $60m in multi-year contracts.
April 15, 2025: In a Truth Social post, Trump floats that Harvard could lose “Tax Exempt Status and be Taxed as a Political Entity”. He accuses Harvard of “pushing political, ideological, and terrorist inspired/supporting ‘Sickness’”.
April 16, 2025: The Department of Homeland Security calls on Harvard to turn over records on any foreign students’ “illegal and violent activities”, while threatening to revoke the university’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program approval. The certification is required for it to enrol foreign students. Noem gives an April 30 deadline for this.
April 21, 2025: Harvard files a lawsuit against the Trump administration, accusing it of violating the First Amendment of the US Constitution with “arbitrary and capricious” funding cuts.
April 30, 2025: Harvard says it shared information requested by Noem regarding foreign students, but does not release the nature of the information provided.
May 2, 2025: Trump again says the administration will take away Harvard’s tax-exempt status. No action is immediately taken.
May 5, 2025: The Trump administration says it is cutting all new federal grants to Harvard.
May 13, 2025: The US Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism announces another $450m in federal funding from eight federal agencies.
May 19, 2025: The DOJ announces it will use the False Claims Act, typically used to punish federal funding recipients accused of corruption, to crack down on universities like Harvard over DEI policies. The Department of Health and Human Services also says it is terminating $60m in federal grants to Harvard.
May 22, 2025: Noem announces revocation of Harvard’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program, blocking it from enrolling new foreign students and saying current students will need to transfer to continue their studies.
Harvard responds: “We are fully committed to maintaining Harvard’s ability to host our international students and scholars, who hail from more than 140 countries and enrich the university – and this nation – immeasurably.”
May 22 (UPI) — Walmart has announced plans to lay off 1,500 corporate employees, part of what it calls a restructuring as it weighs plans to raise prices amid Trump administration tariffs.
“We are reshaping some teams in our Global Tech and Walmart U.S. organizations where we have identified opportunities to remove layers and complexity, speed up decision-making, and help associates innovate rapidly,” a memo to employees obtained by The Hill Wednesday said.
The memo said the retail giant is eliminating some jobs and creating new ones aimed at building on business priorities and growth strategy.
While Walmart said the corporate restructure is not directly related to the looming tariffs, it has said it is weighing the options of price increases and trying to absorb the tariffs when they are imposed, as it has done with past levies.
During a corporate earnings call last week, Walmart CEO Doug McMillion said the giant retailer would not be able to absorb all of the tariffs and said it would likely have to pass some costs on to consumers. Walmart said Wednesday it would be raising some prices.
Economists use Walmart as a gauge to consumer spending and have said that given the large percentage of goods the retailer imports, absorbing all of the tariffs would be difficult.
“Walmart should stop trying to blame the tariffs as the reason for raising prices throughout the chain,” Trump wrote. ” Walmart made billions of dollars last year, far more than expected.”
Walmart CFO John David Rainey countered Thursday that the company is facing unprecedented financial pressure due to the tariffs.
“We have not seen prices increase at this magnitude, in the speed which they’re coming at us before, and so it makes for a challenging environment,” he told CNBC.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has often tried to paint himself as a close friend of United States President Donald Trump, but the relationship has rarely been as straightforward as the Israeli premier has portrayed it.
And recently, speculation across the Israeli media that the relationship between the two leaders, and by extension, their countries, has begun to unravel is becoming unavoidable.
Some idea of the gap was apparent in Trump’s recent Middle East trip, which saw him visit Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates but not Israel, the state that has typically been the US’s closest ally within the region.
Likewise, US negotiations with two of Israel’s fiercest regional opponents, Iran and the Houthi rebels in Yemen, have been taking place without any apparent input from Israel, a country that has always regarded itself as central to such matters. Lastly, against a growing chorus of international condemnation over Israel’s actions in Gaza, there was the decision of US Vice President JD Vance to cancel a planned visit to Israel for apparently “logistical” reasons.
Appearing on national television earlier this month, Israeli commentator Dana Fahn Luzon put it succinctly: “Trump is signalling to Netanyahu, ‘Honey, I’ve had enough of you.’”
United States President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hold a joint press conference in Washington, DC, the US on February 4, 2025 [Celal Gunes/Anadolu Agency]
“We’re seeing a total breakdown of everything that might be of benefit to Israel,” Mitchell Barak, an Israeli pollster and former political aide to several senior Israeli political figures, including Netanyahu, told Al Jazeera. “America was once our closest ally; now we don’t seem to have a seat at the table. This should be of concern to every single Israeli.”
‘Many Israelis blame Netanyahu for this,” Barak continued. “He always presented Trump as somehow being in his pocket, and it’s pretty clear Trump didn’t like that. Netanyahu crossed a line.”
‘No better friend’
While concern over a potential rift may be growing within Israel, prominent voices in the US administration are stressing the strength of their alliance.
Last Sunday, President Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, said that, while the US was keen to avert what he called a “humanitarian crisis” in Gaza, he didn’t think there was “any daylight between President Trump’s position and Prime Minister Netanyahu’s position”.
Police guard the entrance to Columbia University as protesters rally in support of detained Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, March 14, 2025, in New York City, the US [File: Jason DeCrow/AP]
Also doubling down on the US’s commitment to Israel was White House National Security Council spokesperson James Hewitt, who dismissed reports that the Trump administration was preparing to “abandon” Israel if it continues with its war on Gaza, telling Israeli media that “Israel has had no better friend in its history than President Trump”.
The Trump administration has also been active in shutting down criticism of Israel’s war on Gaza in public spheres and specifically on US college campuses.
Several international students have also been arrested and deported for their support of Palestine, including Rumeysa Ozturk, whose arrest as she was walking on a street in a Boston suburb for an opinion piece co-authored in a student newspaper was described by Human Rights Watch as “chilling”.
Protesters gather outside a federal court during a hearing with lawyers for Rumeysa Ozturk, a Tufts University student from Turkiye who was detained by US immigration authorities, April 3, 2025 in Boston, Massachusetts, the US [File: Rodrique Ngowi/AP]
Spatting
Those policies have made it clear that the Trump administration sits firmly in Israel’s corner. And looking back at Trump’s policies in his first presidential term, that is not surprising.
Trump fulfilled many of the Israeli right’s dreams in that term, between 2017 and 2021, including recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, despite its eastern half being occupied Palestinian territory, recognising the annexation of the Golan Heights, despite it being occupied Syrian territory, and pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal.
But those actions are partly to blame for the bumpy relationship between Trump and Netanyahu, with the US president reportedly resentful of what he saw as a lack of gratitude for those pro-Israel policies.
Trump was also furious after Netanyahu congratulated former US President Joe Biden following his 2020 election victory over Trump, which the current president still disputes.
“The first person that congratulated [Biden] was Bibi [Benjamin] Netanyahu, the man that I did more for than any other person I dealt with. … Bibi could have stayed quiet. He has made a terrible mistake,” Trump said in an interview in 2021.
Nevertheless, in the build-up to the 2024 US election, Netanyahu and his allies actively courted candidate Trump, believing him to be the best means of fulfilling their agenda and continuing their war on Gaza, analysts said.
“Netanyahu had really campaigned for Trump before the election, emphasising how bad Biden was,” Yossi Mekelberg, an Associate Fellow at Chatham House, said.
“Now they don’t know which way Trump’s going to go because he’s so contractual. He’s all about the win,” Mekelberg added, referring to the series of victories the president claimed during his recent Gulf tour, adding, “but there’s no win in Palestine”.
A protester holds a placard ahead of a planned meeting between US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, outside the US Consulate in Tel Aviv, Israel, February 3, 2025 [File: Antonio Denti/Reuters]
Across the Israeli press and media, a consensus is taking hold that Trump has simply tired of trying to secure a “win” or an end to the war on Gaza that Netanyahu and his allies on the Israeli hard right have no interest in pursuing.
Israeli Army Radio has even carried reports that Trump has blocked direct contact from Netanyahu over concerns that the Israeli prime minister may be trying to manipulate him.
Quoting an unnamed Israeli official, Yanir Cozin, a reporter with Israeli Army Radio, wrote on X: “There’s nothing Trump hates more than being portrayed as a sucker and someone being played, so he decided to cut off contact.”
“There’s a sense in Israel that Trump’s turned on Netanyahu,” political analyst Nimrod Flaschenberg said from Tel Aviv. “Supporters of Netanyahu are panicking, as they all previously thought that Trump’s backing was unlimited.”
What now?
A break in relations between Netanyahu and Trump might not mean an automatic break between Israel and the US, Flaschenberg cautioned, with all factions across the Israeli political spectrum speculating on what the future may hold under a realigned relationship with the US.
US financial, military and diplomatic support for Israel has been a bedrock of both countries’ foreign policy for decades, Mekelberg said. Moreover, whatever Trump’s current misgivings about his relationship with Netanyahu, support for Israel, while diminishing, remains hardwired into much of his Republican base, analysts and polls have noted, and particularly among Republican – and Democratic – donors.
US President Donald Trump has long been a strong supporter of Israel [File: Jim Watson/AFP]
“Those opposed to Netanyahu and the war are hoping that the US may now apply a lasting ceasefire,” Flaschenberg said, with reference to Israeli reliance upon US patronage. “That’s not because of any great faith in Trump, but more the extent of their dismay in the current government.”
However, equally present are those on the hard right, such as Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich and National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, who Mekelberg speculated may also hope to take advantage of whatever direction US policy towards Israel heads in.
“Ben-Gvir, Smotrich and their backers could take advantage of American disinterest, depending upon what shape it takes,” Mekelberg told Al Jazeera. “If the US continues to provide weapons and diplomatic cover in the UN while letting [Israel] get on with it, then that’s their dream,” he said of Smotrich, who has reassured his backers that allowing minimal aid into the besieged enclave did not mean that Israel would stop “destroying everything that’s left of the Gaza Strip”.
However, where Netanyahu may figure in this is uncertain.
Accusations that the Israeli prime minister has become reliant upon the war to sustain the political coalition he needs to remain in office and avoid both a legal reckoning in his corruption trial, as well as a political reckoning over his government’s failures ahead of the October 7, 2023 attack, are both widespread and longstanding.
“I don’t know if Netanyahu can come back from this,” Barak said, still uncertain about whether the prime minister can demonstrate his survival skills once again. “There’s a lot of talk about Netanyahu being at the end of his line. I don’t know. They’ve been saying that for years, and he’s still here. They were saying that when I was his aide, but I can’t see any more magic tricks that are available to him.”
President Donald Trump appears with Education Secretary Linda McMahon in March, when Trump issued an executive order that sought to close the department, despite the Department of Education Organization Act that clearly prohibits that from the executive branch. File Photo by Jim Lo Scalzo/UPI | License Photo
May 22 (UPI) — A federal judge in Massachusetts issued an injunction Thursday that blocks the Trump administration from its plan to dismantle the Department of Education, and that those employees recently fired from the department be rehired.
U.S. District Judge Myong J. Joun stated in his ruling: “The Department must be able to carry out its functions and its obligations under the [Department of Education Organization Act] and other relevant statutes as mandated by Congress.”
Joun ruled on the first civil action that was filed by the State of New York against Education Department Secretary Linda McMahon and Somerville Public Schools of Massachusetts against President Donald Trump that stated “a preliminary injunction is warranted to return the Department to the status quo such that it can comply with its statutory obligations.”
The Republican-controlled US House of Representatives has passed the “Big, Beautiful Bill”, the sweeping tax and spending bill by a single vote.
The legislation, which would enact much of President Donald Trump’s policy agenda, passed early Thursday morning after an overnight session.
The bill, which is now headed to the Senate, will cut taxes, but also saddle the country with trillions of dollars more in debt.
The bill would fulfil many of Trump’s populist campaign pledges, delivering new tax breaks on tips and car loans and boosting spending on the military and border enforcement. It will add about $3.8 trillion to the federal government’s $36.2 trillion in debt over the next decade, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.
“This is arguably the most significant piece of Legislation that will ever be signed in the History of our Country!” Trump wrote on social media.
The package passed in a 215-214 vote after a marathon push that kept lawmakers debating the bill through two successive nights.
All of the chamber’s Democrats and two Republicans voted against it, while a third Republican voted “present”, neither for nor against the bill. Another Republican missed the vote because he was asleep.
With a narrow 220-212 majority, House Speaker Mike Johnson could not afford to lose more than a handful of votes from his side, and he made several last-minute changes to satisfy various Republican factions.
“The House has passed generational, truly nation-shaping legislation,” Johnson said.
The bill is now headed to the Republican-controlled Senate, where it will likely be changed further during weeks of debate.
The 1,100-page bill would extend corporate and individual tax cuts passed in 2017 during Trump’s first term in office, cancel many green-energy incentives passed by Democratic former President Joe Biden and tighten eligibility for health and food programmes for the poor.
It also would fund Trump’s crackdown on immigration, adding tens of thousands of border guards and creating the capacity to deport up to one million people each year. Regulations on firearm silencers would be loosened.
The bill passed despite growing concerns about the US debt, which has reached 124 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), prompting a downgrade of the country’s top-notch credit rating by Moody’s last week. The US government has recorded budget deficits every year of this century, as Republican and Democratic administrations alike have failed to bring spending into alignment with revenue.
Interest payments accounted for one out of every eight dollars spent by the US government last year, more than the amount spent on the military, according to the CBO. That share is due to grow to one out of every six dollars over the next 10 years as an ageing population pushes up the government’s health and pension costs, even if Trump’s budget bill is not taken into account.
A mixed response
“We’re not rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic tonight. We’re putting coal in the boiler and setting a course for the iceberg,” said Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky, one of the two Republicans to vote against the bill.
The growing debt has paradoxically given urgency for Republicans to pass the bill, as it would raise the federal government’s debt ceiling by $4 trillion. That would avert the prospect of a default, which officials have warned could otherwise come sometime in the middle of this year.
Republicans have also argued that failure to pass the bill would mean an effective tax hike for many Americans, as Trump’s 2017 tax cuts are due to expire at the end of the year.
Hardliners on the party’s right flank had pushed for deeper spending cuts to lessen the budget impact, but they met resistance from centrists who worried that would fall too heavily on the 71 million low-income Americans enrolled in the Medicaid health programme. Johnson made changes to address conservatives’ concerns, pulling forward new work requirements for Medicaid recipients to take effect at the end of 2026, two years earlier than before. That would kick several million people off the programme, according to the CBO. The bill also would penalise states that expand Medicaid in the future.
Johnson also expanded a deduction for state and local tax payments from $30,000 to $40,000, which was a priority for a handful of centrist Republicans who represent high-tax states like New York and California. Democrats blasted the bill as disproportionately benefitting the wealthy while cutting benefits for working Americans. The CBO found it would reduce income for the poorest 10 percent of US households and boost income for the top 10 percent.
“This bill is a scam, a tax scam designed to steal from you, the American people, and give to Trump’s millionaire and billionaire friends,” Democratic Representative Jim McGovern said.
Investors, unnerved by the fiscal position of the US and Trump’s erratic tariff moves, are increasingly selling the dollar and other US assets that make up the bedrock of the global financial system. The three major indices the Dow, Nasdaq and S&P 500 are trending upwards slightly after its worst day in a month following a bond market sell-off yesterday.
JPMorgan Chase Chief Executive Jamie Dimon gave a mixed response to the bill’s passage.
“I think they should do the tax bill. I do think it’ll stabilise things a little bit, but it’ll probably add to the deficit,” Dimon said at JPMorgan’s Global China Summit in Shanghai.
Chagossians residing in Britain protest outside the High Court in London on Thursday ahead of a hearing to decide whether a controversial deal to hand the Chagos Islands to Mauritius can go ahead. Photo by Andy Rain/EPA-EFE
May 22 (UPI) — A signing ceremony ceding the British Indian Ocean Territory of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius on Thursday was called off at the last moment after Britain’s High Court granted an injunction in the middle of the night to islanders opposing the deal.
“On-call” judge, Justice Goose, granted the temporary stay at 2:25 a.m. local time to two Chagos petitioners, ruling that the defendant, the Home Office, must “maintain the jurisdiction of the United Kingdom over the British Indian Ocean Territory until further order,” pending a further hearing during working hours Thursday.
The 11th-hour legal action forced the ceremony with Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Mauritian government representatives to be put on hold.
Stuart Lake, legal counsel for Beatrice Pompe, one of the claimants, told the Financial Times that his client was “deeply concerned that the government has chosen to give up sovereignty of the Chagos Islands without any consultation or protections for those that are indigenous to the islands.”
A British government spokesman declined to comment but insisted the deal with its former colony was “the right thing to protect the British people and our national security.”
Under the agreement, Britain will transfer sovereignty to Mauritius of the archipelago, home to a giant U.K.-U.S. military base on the island of Diego Garcia, but retain control of Diego Garcia by leasing it back on a 99-year, multi-billion dollar deal.
The United States pays Britain for use of the base, but the figure has never been made public.
Diego Garcia inhabitants have been engaged in a decades-long legal battle against their forcible displacement during the construction of the base throughout the late 1960s, mainly to Mauritius, the Seychelles and Britain, with the Chagos Islands split off from Mauritius when it became independent in 1968.
Joining a protest by Chagos people outside Parliament, the opposition Conservative Party’s shadow foreign secretary Priti Patel called Thursday’s legal intervention “a humiliation” for Starmer and Foreign Secretary David Lammy.
“Their rights, views and voices over the future of Chagos have been ignored by Labour which continues to cause distress and uncertainty for this wonderful community,” she wrote in a post on X.
“Labour’s Chagos Surrender Deal is bad for our defence and security interests, bad for British taxpayers and bad for British Chagossians,” said Patel.
The deal has also been condemned by Human Rights Watch, which has demanded Britain and the United States pay reparations after a 2023 report alleged the “forced displacement of the Chagossians and ongoing abuses amount to crimes against humanity committed by a colonial power against an Indigenous people.”
The United States initially welcomed the deal when it was struck in October and will see the other 57 currently uninhabited islands in the archipelago opened up for settlement. Diego Garcia, however, will remain out of bounds to its former residents and their descendants on “security grounds.”
U.S. President Joe Biden called the deal “a clear demonstration that through diplomacy and partnership, countries can overcome long-standing historical challenges to reach peaceful and mutually beneficial outcomes.”
But the deal was delayed after Donald Trump won back the presidency in November, pending his approval, and after the elections days later in Mauritius over the value of the lease.
Trump gave his backing in February during a visit to Washington by Starmer, despite warnings from Secretary of State Marco Rubio and other senior Republicans who said Mauritius’ links to China posed a “serious security threat” to U.S. national security.
May 20 (UPI) — The U.S. House Rules Committee, after 22 hours of proceedings, late Wednesday advanced President Donald Trump‘s legislative agenda that experts say would add $3 trillion to the federal deficit and negatively affect the poorest of Americans.
Debate on the full House floor began early Thursday.
The House Rules Committee adopted the bill in an 8-4 vote along party lines. They first met shortly after 1 a.m. Wednesday to consider the 1,116-page budget that is roughly $7 trillion
The Finance Committee late Sunday approved the legislation 17-16 along party lines with four Republicans who rejected the bill the first time on Friday voting present: Ralph Norman of Oklagoa, Chip Roy of Texas, Andrew Clyde of Georgia and Josh Brecheen of Oklahoma.
“What the hell are you guys so scared of, that you guys are holding this hearing at 1 in the morning?” Rules Committee Ranking Member Jim McGovern, D-Mass., said. “If Republicans are so proud of what is in this bill, then why are you trying to ram it through in the dead of the night?”
The full House must also vote to adopt the rule first before taking up the underlying bill. Republicans hope to move the House bill, with no support from Democrats, to the Senate by Memorial Day on Monday.
With the GOP holding a slim majority of 220-212, House Speaker Mike Johnson can afford to lose more than three GOP votes. Party hardliners and moderates from vulnerable districts have failed to agree on key issues that include Medicaid, federal clean energy programs and tax breaks to states.
Three House seats were held by Democrats who died, including Gerry Connolly of Virginia on Wednesday.
At least five House GOP members considered vulnerable in the 2026 midterm elections — including Rep. Mike Lawler, R-N.Y. — have vowed to vote against the bill unless it ups the proposed state and local tax deduction from the current proposed $30,000.
The bill contains a massive overhaul of the tax code and deep spending cuts.
An amendment included speeding up work requirements for Medicaid to the end of 2026 rather than 2029.
It also tightens the definition of a “qualified alien” eligible for the program.
There is a new incentive for states that hadn’t expanded Medicaid under Obamacare. It allows those states to pay 110% of Medicare rates for state directed payments as a way to finance Medicaid.
The Center on Budget and Policies Priorities estimates 36 million Medicaid enrollees could be at risk of losing coverage because of potential work requirements and other factors.
In December, there were 78,532,341 on Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program, or CHIP.
Also, the bill formalizes the so-called SALT cap, which would allow people to deduct state and local income taxes up to $40,000 for certain income groups. GOP leaders initially wanted cap of $30,000 but key New York, New Jersey and California Republicans vulnerable in the 2026 election, had refused to support it.
Republicans opted to phase out Biden energy tax credits sooner than planned. New projects must break ground within 60 days or be “in service” by the end of 2028 to qualify for the credits.
Earlier, Rep. Chip Roy of Texas,, a holdout, told CNN’s Manu Raju he was “still looking to review more provisions and have more conversations.”
“Yeah, I’m going to vote for it,” Rep. Andy Biggs ,of Arizona, told CNN.
Medicaid changes and a $4 trillion debt limit increase, among other provisions.
The bill includes a $4 trillion debt limit.
Budget plan’s analysis
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office released data Tuesday that the House Republican’s budget proposal and its tax provisions would cut federal revenue by around 10% of America’s current national debt over the next decade.
The GOP bill proposal could cost American taxpayers $3.8 trillion over the next 10 years, according to a report this month by the Joint Committee on Taxation, which looked at the effect of tax policies versus spending cuts.
“This bill does not add to the deficit,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt claimed Monday during a press briefing.
On Friday, Moody’s Ratings downgraded the U.S. debt citing the GOP proposal that Moody’s says will tack on $4 trillion to the national debt over the next 10 years.
As proposed, the bill would extend Trump’s tax cuts largely to the wealthiest Americans and cut personal income tax rates. It also establishes fresh tax reductions on tips, Social Security, overtime payments and loan interest on automobiles produced in the United States.
An analysis Monday by the University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Wharton school projects that under the Republican plan, the lowest-income American citizens would end up paying more.
Leavitt said the Trump administration’s Council of Economic Advisers claim that there’s $1.6 trillion worth of savings in the GOP bill.
“That’s the largest saving for any legislation that has ever passed Capitol Hill in our nation’s history,” Leavitt continued.
On Tuesday, the president was on Capitol Hill to meet with Johnson and lawmakers in order to push his legislative agenda.
“While I respect President Trump and understand the importance of passing this legislation, I will not do so at the expense of my district,” Lawler posted on X Tuesday afternoon.
Lawler noted that his district was one of only three kept by a Republican that then-Vice President Kamala Harris had won in November’s presidential election in a heavily-taxed Congressional district.
“For over two years, I have been abundantly clear to everyone from the President to House Leadership about the importance of lifting the cap on SALT,” he said about state and local tax deduction caps.
A ‘comprehensive review’ of the US’s chaotic military withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021 has also been ordered.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said that the United States is reviewing whether to designate Afghanistan’s rulers, the Taliban, as a “foreign terrorist organization”.
Rubio told the House Foreign Affairs Committee during a hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington on Wednesday, “I believe that classification is now, once again, under review.”
The response came a day after US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered a “comprehensive review” of the United States’s chaotic military withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021, an evacuation operation in which 13 US service members and 150 Afghans were killed at Kabul’s airport in an ISIL (ISIS) bombing.
Hegseth said in a memo on Tuesday that after three months of assessing the withdrawal, a comprehensive review was needed to ensure accountability for this event.
“This remains an important step toward regaining faith and trust with the American people and all those who wear the uniform, and is prudent based on the number of casualties and equipment lost during the execution of this withdrawal operation,” Hegseth wrote.
Former President Joe Biden’s administration, which oversaw the pull-out, mostly blamed the resulting chaos on a lack of planning and reductions in troops by the first Donald Trump administration, following its deal with the Taliban to accelerate the withdrawal of US forces.
Trump had signed the deal with the Taliban in Doha in February 2020 aimed at ending its 18-year war in Afghanistan, beginning with the withdrawal of about 4,000 troops “within months”.
The then-Trump administration had agreed it would withdraw from the country by May 2021 if the Taliban negotiated a peace agreement with the Afghan government and promised to prevent internationally designated terrorist groups, such as al-Qaeda and ISIL, from gaining a foothold in the country.
After assuming office in January 2021, Biden said he had to respect the agreement or risk new conflicts with the Taliban, which could have required additional troops in Afghanistan.
On the 2024 campaign trail, Trump frequently criticised Biden and his administration for the withdrawal, saying that the manner in which it was done “was the most embarrassing day in the history of our country’s life.” Trump said that the withdrawal should have been done with “dignity, with strength, with power.”
Senior US military officials, including then-Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and the then-top US general, Mark Milley, have already appeared before lawmakers to give their testimonies regarding the withdrawal.
The war in Afghanistan from 2001-2021 was the US’s longest war, surpassing Vietnam.
US Central Command, which oversees operations in the Middle East, has also carried out an investigation into the ISIL attack on Kabul during the last few days of the withdrawal.
May 21 (UPI) — Education Secretary Linda McMahon, testifying before a House subcommittee on Wednesday, defended a 15.3% leaner budget from last year as part of the department’s “final mission.”
President Donald Trump‘s budget request would cut funding to the Education Department by about $12 billion to wind down the agency. The House bill allocated $30.9 billion and the Senate version $31.9 billion.
She said her top priorities are support for charter schools, which would receive a $60 million funding increase, as well as improving literacy rates and returning education to states. Charters schools are the only ones with a budget funding rise.
“The fiscal year ’26 budget will take a significant step toward that goal,” McMahon told legislators on the House Committee on Appropriations’ education subcommittee. “We seek to shrink federal bureaucracy, save taxpayer money and empower states who best know their local needs to manage education in this country.”
As Republicans supported her plans, Democrats blasted her.
“By recklessly incapacitating the department you lead, you are usurping Congress’ authority and infringing on Congress’ power of the purse,” Rosa DeLauro, of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the appropriations committee, said.
She decried cuts for higher education.
“Your visions for students aspiring to access and pay for college is particularly grim,” DeLauro said. “Some families do not need financial assistance to go to college, but that’s not true for the rest.”
Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman, of New Jersey, also blasted states gaining greater authority.
“I’m asking you, do you realize that to send authority back to the states, to eliminate your oversight, to eliminate your accountability, to eliminate your determination as to resources going to schools that are teaching public schools that are teaching underserved communities, this will result in the very reason that we had to get the involvement of our government in this, and that’s a yes or no,” she said.
“It isn’t a yes or no, but I will not respond to any questions based on the theory that this administration doesn’t care anything about the law and operates outside it,” McMahon responded.
Coleman said: “From the president of the United States conducting himself in a corrupt manner to his family enriching him and himself corruptly … I’m telling you, the Department of Education is one of the most important departments in this country and you should feel shameful [to] be engaged with an administration that doesn’t give a damn.”
McMahon said she is not trying to remove 8% to 10% that goes to states, and instead moving programs to other departments.
She described her agency as a federal funding “pass-through mechanism” and other agencies could take over the job of distributing allocations from Congress.
“Whether the channels of that funding are through HHS [Health and Human Services], or whether they’re funneled through the DOJ (Department of Jusrtice], or whether they’re funneled through the Treasury or SBA [Smal Business Administration] or other departments, the work is going to continue to get done,” McMahon said.
Plans are to move the student loan programs to the SBA, which McMahon was the administrator during the first Trump administration.
The reductions include eliminating two federal programs designed at improving college access for disadvantaged, TRIO, and low-income students, Gear Up, at a cost of $1.6 billion. Also, the federal Work-Study Program would shift responsibility to states, and funding would be eliminated for Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grants to undergraduate students.
And funding would be reduced 35%, or about $49 million, for the already-scaled back Office for Civil Rights, which investigates harassment and discrimination on college campuses and in K-12 schools.
The budget shifts funding from programs supporting diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives.
She said full funding would remain for Title I-A, which allocates funds to schools with the highest percentages of children from low-income families, and those with the Disabilities Education Act for free public education and support services for children with disabilities.
“Here we are today with a Department of Education that was really stood up in 1980 by President Carter,” McMahon said. “We’ve spent over $3 trillion during that time, and every year we have seen our scores continue to either stagnate or fall. It is clear that we are not doing something right.”
On March 20,, Trump signed an executive order directing McMahon to “take all necessary steps to facilitate the closure of the Department of Education.”
Six days earlier, the agency announced a workforce reduction that would cut nearly 50% of employees, 1,315.
The department, already the smallest Cabinet-level agency before the recent layoffs, distributed roughly $242 billion to students, K-12 schools and universities in the 2024 fiscal year. The fiscal year ends Sept. 30.
The administration of President Donald Trump has begun the process of ending the federal government’s involvement in reforming local police departments, a civil rights effort that gained steam after the deaths of unarmed Black people like George Floyd and Breonna Taylor.
On Wednesday, the United States Department of Justice announced it would cancel two proposed settlements that would have seen the cities of Louisville, Kentucky, and Minneapolis, Minnesota, agree to federal oversight of their police departments.
Generally, those settlements — called consent decrees — involve a series of steps and goals that the two parties negotiate and that a federal court helps enforce.
In addition, the Justice Department said it would withdraw reports on six other local police departments which found patterns of discrimination and excessive violence.
The Trump administration framed the announcement as part of its efforts to transfer greater responsibility towards individual cities and states — and away from the federal government.
“It’s our view at the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division under the Trump administration that federal micromanagement of local police should be a rare exception, and not the norm,” said Harmeet Dhillon, an assistant attorney general at the Justice Department, said.
She argued that such federal oversight was a waste of taxpayer funds.
“There is a lack of accountability. There is a lack of local control. And there is an industry here that is, I think, ripping off the taxpayers and making citizens less safe,” Dhillon said.
But civil rights leaders and police reform advocates reacted with outrage over the news, which arrived just days before the fifth anniversary of Floyd’s murder.
Reverend Al Sharpton was among the leaders who called for police departments to take meaningful action after a viral video captured Floyd’s final moments. On May 25, 2020, a white police officer, Derek Chauvin, leaned his knee on Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes, causing him to asphyxiate and die.
“This move isn’t just a policy reversal,” Sharpton said. “It’s a moral retreat that sends a chilling message that accountability is optional when it comes to Black and Brown victims.”
He warned that the Trump administration’s move sent a signal to police departments that they were “above scrutiny”.
The year of Floyd’s murder was also marked by a number of other high-profile deaths, including Taylor’s.
The 26-year-old medical worker was in bed late at night on March 13, 2020, when police used a battering ram to break into her apartment. Her boyfriend feared they were being attacked and fired his gun once. The police responded with a volley of bullets, killing Taylor, who was struck six times.
Her death and others stirred a period of nationwide unrest in the US, with millions of people protesting in the streets as part of social justice movements like Black Lives Matter. It is thought that the 2020 “racial reckoning” was one of the biggest mass demonstrations in US history.
Those protests unfolded in the waning months of Trump’s first term, and when Democrat Joe Biden succeeded him as president in 2021, the Justice Department embarked on a series of 12 investigations looking into allegations of police overreach and excessive violence on the local level.
Those investigations were called “pattern-or-practice” probes, designed to look into whether incidents of police brutality were one-offs or part of a larger trend in a given police department.
Floyd’s murder took place in Minneapolis and Taylor’s in Louisville — the two cities where the Trump Justice Department decided to drop its settlements on Wednesday. In both cities, under Biden, the Justice Department had found patterns of discriminatory policing.
“Police officers must often make split-second decisions and risk their lives to keep their communities safe,” the report on Minneapolis reads.
But, it adds, the local police department “used dangerous techniques and weapons against people who committed at most a petty offence and sometimes no offense at all”.
Other police departments scrutinised during this period included ones in Phoenix, Arizona; Memphis, Tennessee; Trenton, New Jersey; Mount Vernon, New York; Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; and the Louisiana State Police.
Dhillon, who now runs the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, positioned the retractions of those Biden-era findings as a policy pivot. She also condemned the consent decrees as an overused tool and indicated she would look into rescinding some agreements that were already in place.
That process would likely involve a judge’s approval, however.
And while some community advocates have expressed concerns that consent decrees could place a burden on already over-stretched law enforcement departments, others disagree with the Justice Department’s latest move, arguing that a retreat could strip resources and momentum from police reform.
At the Louisville Metro Police Department (LMPD), Chief Paul Humphrey said the commitment to better policing went beyond any settlement. He indicated he would look for an independent monitor to oversee reforms.
“It’s not about these words on this paper,” he said. “It’s about the work that the men and women of LMPD, the men and women of metro government and the community will do together in order to make us a safer, better place.”
And in Minneapolis, Mayor Jacob Frey doubled down, saying he could keep pushing forward with the police reform plan his city had agreed to.
“We will comply with every sentence of every paragraph of the 169-page consent decree that we signed this year,” he said at a news conference.
“We will make sure that we are moving forward with every sentence of every paragraph of both the settlement around the Minnesota Department of Human Rights, as well as the consent decree.”
President Donald Trump (C), alongside coach Todd Golden (L), welcomes the 2025 NCAA men’s college basketball champions, the University of Florida Gators, to the White House in Washington on Wednesday. Attorney General Pam Bondi R) , who received her bachelor’s degree from the University of Florida, looks on. Pool Photo by Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA-EFE
WASHINGTON, May 21 (UPI) — President Donald Trump welcomed the University of Florida’s men’s basketball team to the White House on Wednesday afternoon to celebrate its 2025 NCAA championship season, praising the Gators’ teamwork, grit and determination.
Standing alongside head coach Todd Golden, Trump called Florida’s run “one for the history books” and noted the program’s place in history as the only NCAA Division I school to win three national titles in both basketball (2006, 2007, 2025) and football (1996, 2006, 2008).
The Gators finished a dominant 36-4 season with a 65-63 victory over Houston in what Trump described as “one of the most exciting games and championships” he had seen.
“You refused to let up when the odds were against you,” Trump told the team. “Lesser teams would have crumbled.”
Trump highlighted stellar performances throughout the season, including that by senior guard Walter Clayton Jr., who scored a career-high 34 points in the Final Four against Auburn and became the first player since Larry Bird in 1979 to score 30 points or more in both the Elite Eight and Final Four.
“He’s unbelievably special,” Trump said. “He’s going to be a very early draft pick if they’re smart.”
University of Florida Interim President Kent Fuchs, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a former Florida senator, and U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, who served at Florida attorney general.
Golden thanked Trump for the invitation and drew a comparison between the team’s culture and the country’s ideals.
“Mr. President, I’d like to think of our program similarly to how you think of the United States. We’re a meritocracy,” Golden said. “We work really, really hard. No matter what you look like, where you come from, if you put the team first and win, we’re going to play you.”
He then presented the president with a signed Gators jersey featuring the number 47, referencing Trump’s status as the 47th president.
Trump accepted the gift and invited the team to the Oval Office for commemorative coins and photos alongside members of his administration and several lawmakers.
